


The Shape I Take

by lotherington



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Illness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotherington/pseuds/lotherington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>My dear, my skeleton will set like biscuit overnight, / like glass, like ice, and you can choose to snap me back to life before first light, / or let me laze until / the shape I take becomes the shape I keep. / Don’t leave me be. Don’t let me sleep.</i></p><p>Sherlock suffers from a type of arthritis called Ankylosing Spondilitis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shape I Take

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been doing a lot of reading for my dissertation recently and happened upon the poem this fic is based on a few weeks ago. The idea of doing a crossover wouldn’t leave me alone, so here we are. More information about Ankylosing Spondylitis can be found [here](http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Ankylosing-spondylitis/Pages/Introduction.aspx), and more information about Simon Armitage, who wrote the poem, (and in my opinion is the best poet in the world) is [here](http://www.simonarmitage.com/).

[   
](http://s1089.photobucket.com/albums/i360/lotherington/?action=view&current=resize.jpg)

‘John.’

Sherlock’s voice is small, scared, that first night that he doesn’t set the alarm in nearly twelve years.

‘Yes?’

‘You will wake me up, won’t you?’

He lies flat on his back on his hard mattress and stares into the darkness above his head.

‘Of course I will.’ John drops a kiss to Sherlock’s bare shoulder and folds into Sherlock’s side.

Sherlock breathes out through his nose. He swallows, closes his eyes, and sleeps.

***

There’s a fresh cup of tea on the bedside table when Sherlock wakes. He turns his head to look at it and breathes in sharply when a hand comes to rest gently on his abdomen.

‘Sorry,’ John says, a fond smile on his lips when Sherlock’s gaze shifts to him. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

Sherlock smiles back, the gesture weak. He closes his eyes again and counts before he attempts to sit up.

One. Two. Three. Four.

***

That evening, Sherlock lingers in the kitchen, re-arranging petri dishes full of mould spores. He sits for ten minutes, stands for fifteen, walks what must be near enough a mile around the table. John comes in and puts his mug next to the sink. He kisses Sherlock’s bicep.

‘Coming to bed?’ he asks quietly.

Sherlock shakes his head.

‘Later, perhaps,’ he says. He shifts a dish of green mould next to a dish that holds furry white mould in an almost concentric pattern.

‘Alright.’ John squeezes Sherlock’s hip and Sherlock twists his head to hide his wince.

***

Sherlock startles awake at John’s hand curling round the back of his neck, the fingers rubbing gently at his skin. He breathes in deeply through his nose when he realises that his spine has set in place over the few hours he has been asleep at the kitchen table, bent forward at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, his chin pointing down towards his chest.

Stupid. Stupid, scared man.

‘Why didn’t you come to bed?’ John asks, still rubbing the back of Sherlock’s neck, not yet aware that Sherlock is frozen, that his glassy vertebrae have fused together while the grey dawn light crept over the kitchen.

Gripping the edge of the table and gritting his teeth, Sherlock screws his eyes shut and arches his spine, his knuckles turning whiter and whiter with every crack and click of his bones. He sits upright, panting for breath from the pain of it; sharp and acute and singing along every nerve ending.

‘Sherlock?’ John murmurs, his voice tight with concern. His hand still rests on Sherlock’s neck.

Lower back, now. Sherlock stands up, slow and determined, clenching his jaw as his bones at the base of his spine release one another, let one another go with several frantic pops.

‘Sherlock?’ John says again. ‘Sherlock?’

***

‘Ankylosing spondylitis,’ Sherlock says when John places a glass of water in front of him, half-empty, two soluble paracetamol tablets fizzing and whispering in the bottom. ‘It’s a type of arthritis that affects the spine.' John nods.

‘Manageable?’ he asks.

‘Evidently.’ Sherlock sighs and takes hold of the glass, swirling the bitter mixture in the bottom around. He drinks it down in one, pulls a face at the taste. ‘It’s easier when I move.’

The toast pops up from the toaster. John butters it, stacks it on a plate, sits down opposite Sherlock, places the plate between them.

‘Are you scared of going to sleep?’ John asks, tilting his head to one side.

‘No,’ Sherlock scoffs, snatching a piece of toast from the plate and frowning. ‘No.’

***

That night, Sherlock lies on his stomach on the bed, naked, his arms folded underneath his head. John straddles him, suspends himself above Sherlock’s back. Warm kisses are pressed to each of Sherlock’s vertebrae: seven cervical, twelve thoracic, five lumbar.

‘Go to sleep,’ John murmurs, his breath hot against the dip of Sherlock’s back. ‘I’ll wake you up.’

‘Do you promise?’ The words are out of Sherlock’s mouth before he has time to stop them, to even think about it. He winces at the needy exclamation.

John kisses his way to Sherlock’s neck again, brushes his nose over the soft curls at Sherlock’s nape.

‘I promise,’ he whispers.

***

Sherlock wakes to a warm hand rubbing slow circles at the base of his spine. He opens his eyes a fraction, and John’s kind, worn face shifts into focus.

‘Morning,’ John says. Sherlock smiles.

‘Morning,’ he replies.


End file.
